An Outcast Turned Icon's Enduring Impact on America
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Starred review from March 15, 2025
On the continuing legacy of a canonical figure of the Civil Rights era. As historian and journalist Whitaker notes at the outset, Malcolm X was so central to Black young people just four years after his death that "they demanded time off from school to honor him"--and got it, complete with a live reenactment of Ossie Davis' famed eulogy. His influence has only grown, nationally and internationally: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, coauthored by Alex Haley, is a standard text in high school and college curricula, and his presence endures in pop culture thanks to Spike Lee's biopic and many samplings of Malcolm X's voice on the part of rap and hip-hop artists. Oddly, Whitaker adds, Malcolm X is embraced by both left and right, with Black conservatives embracing his call for "self-improvement and economic self-reliance." One aspect of his life after death, Whitaker writes, is the question of who assassinated him, a question that a large portion of this text adumbrates, with several valuable clues uncovered only recently by documentary filmmakers. A search of declassified FBI files also indicated that the agency was well aware of the imminent threat to Malcolm X but did not pursue its leads, while members of the Black Muslim community kept their silence in the belief that "Malcolm had been foolish and disloyal" to split with leader Elijah Muhammad. Apart from providing a fascinating detective story, Whitaker documents the sometimes surprising ways in which Malcolm X remains a model of Black resistance--as, for example, an opera that "became a vehicle for making Malcolm newly relevant to the 'Black Panther' generation," as well as the renewed interest in him with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. A complex, thoughtfully written book that ably lives up to its title.
COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from May 1, 2025
A radical globalist. A socialist revolutionary. A social conservative. All of these labels have been applied to the man known as Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, and Malcolm X. Gunned down in Harlem at age 39 in February 1965, Malcolm's cultural relevance has continued to grow, as have the disagreements over his message and the truth about his death. Whitaker explores both in alternating chapters, looking at the events surrounding the assassination, then broadening the scope to examine the lives Malcolm touched and all that he inspired. While the murder investigation is a cautionary tale of justice delayed and denied, it is the cultural debates that form the book. Such disparate figures as Amiri Baraka, Julius Lester, Clarence Thomas, Kwame Ture, Tupac, Kareem Abdul Jabarr, John Carlos, August Wilson, and Barack Obama have cited Malcolm as an influence. His life has been the subject of documentaries, Spike Lee's iconic feature film, plays, and an Afrofuturist opera, while Public Enemy's sampling of Malcolm's "too Black, too strong" helped bring his voice to the hip-hop generation. Many have felt a lightning shock of recognition at Malcolm's powerful indictment of American racism and the tremendous and enduring pride he engendered in Black people.
COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.